Jun 23, 2016

Greetings Squad!

As one of the top ten in the Video Game contest I was asked to answer two questions for the Inkshares/Nerdist blog. I’ve been waiting to send out this update until that posted because I wanted to talk a little bit more about it.

The questions were “What was the first video game whose narrative captured your imagination?” and “How has the introduction of literary elements…improved video gaming?”.  You can find my answers in the requested 200 words or less on the blog at http://blog.inkshares.com/

If you’ll indulge me what I want to do here is use a few more words to talk about the games that came before “narrative”. I put that word in quotes because I think there are different types of narrative. There is the story in the game and there is the story OF the game. I think the narrative of the early games was actually behind the scenes, in the making of the games.

When I started writing “Stage Clear” my inspiration was the limited storylines (i.e. Invaders from Space!) and the mechanics of the gameplay. What I’ve ended up with is something much more though. I realized that more than anything my story has been shaped by the people, the technology, and changes in the video game industry during its first two decades. While the book is science fiction its plot elements are inspired by video game history. And I think that’s kind of cool.

I’m not sure what sub-genre that would be though. It doesn’t match the Goodreads definition of historical science fiction. Historically inspired science fiction? Recent history inspired plot science fiction? RHIPSF? Hmm, gonna have to work on that…

PT